According to a new report by Ofcom, Britain’s communications regulatory authority (reported on the BBC News site) a staggering 70% of 16-24 year olds online (compared to 41% of the general population) have used some kind of social networking site, such as My Space, and one in five have their own website or blog.

The interesting bits are from page 68 of the telecoms section PDF (p 172 of the report). For example:

41% of UK adults with internet at home say they have used social network sites, with around half of those doing so on a weekly basis . Nearly one third use them for discussing hobbies and interests, and a further 26% discuss work-related topics online. Fewer internet users take advantage of websites for discussing personal issues (17%) or meeting new people (15%).

There has been a recent report by the excellent Pew Internet and American Life project on bloggers in the US as well that I imagine many of you have heard of but because they measure things differently (eg treating social networking software as a kind of blog for statistical purposes) it is hard to directly compare them with the results of this survey. Both the UK and US have some way to go in matching S Korea in blogging, however. Last year according to the Korean Ministry of Information and Communication more than half of all of S Koreans in their 20s had a blog (that’s in part because more than 95% of S Koreans that age were online).

Pew makes their raw data available a few months after the reports they produce emerge and I understand it is possible that Ofcom will do the same so if you are a researcher it may be worth visiting their research page from time to time to see if it turns up…

David Brake

This entry was posted on Thursday, August 10th, 2006 at 8:51 pm and is filed under Internet self performance, blogging. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.